2014 Holiday Arts Tour Makes Sense of this Crazy World

When Jan Wall comes to the Thursday Night Drawing session, many of us marvel at her drawing. I’ll go into the kitchen on the pretext of getting some tea just so I can stand in the doorway and quietly watch her work. I watch Jan boldly and confidently apply tonal layers of conte or pastel, translating mere visual information into a spirited response to nature. “Oh yeah,” I think, “That’s how it’s done. That drawing makes sense of this crazy world!” Such is the power and appeal of Jan’s pastel work. Jan is a mature artist who has refined her craft and proficiency to at least momentarily convince the viewer that this is it- this is the only way it should be done. Whether drawing a lake, creek, mountain or a flesh and blood human, Jan has an innate and refined ability to perceive the full mass, isolate the shapes of light and shadow, accent the emotion and build the form slowly. “I paint things in, I paint things out;” she says. “I go back and forth working on my pastel painting until something talks to me. I’m doing a dance with my materials on the surface. It’s magic and really fun- more meaningful than documentation.”  What appear to be random and unrelated strokes of pastel eventually add up and surprise! Now you see it!

This weekend and next, December 6th and 7th, and 13th and 14th, the Vashon Island Art Studio Holiday Tour of 2014 will take place from 10 am to 4 pm across the island. Time and again, you will have the opportunity to view a cornucopia of skills and proficiency that elicit variations of that same persuasive beauty that sweeps us in when we observe a harmonious work of art: “That’s beautiful!” you might say at any one of the 32 stops on the tour. “That makes sense of this crazy world!” We recommend you locate a Holiday Studio Tour brochure (available at most island establishments) and map out your tour. “Pursue what makes you sing,” Jan says, “and love whatever it is you love and it’ll be worth doing no matter what happens.” We are convinced you’ll love seeing what our island artists love.

Jan is one of three artists featured at Studio #9, Plum Lodge Painters, located at 14210 SW Reddings Beach Road. This article will highlight those three painters and the five artists at Studio #8, Twigs Tiles and Fabric.

If Jan is the Dionysian spirit of Stop # 9 on the Holiday Arts Tour, Donna Botten would be the Apollonian spirit, with her carefully and beautifully crafted, luminous watercolors. Where Jan Wall revels in the overall Gestalt of nature, Donna finds God in the details, sometimes taking two weeks to complete a painting. Whether painting neglected old farm vehicles, dogs, cats, hallways, island friends or children, Donna wraps a clear and colorful light around everything. “I start painting in the early morning and before I know it, it’s 5 PM and I haven’t had a negative thought all day!” Such daily discipline has rewarded this self-taught, lifelong Vashon artist with broad horizons, expertise and a refined aesthetic that rivals even the most ardent Art School graduate’s training.  She is not only intimately familiar with how different watercolors react with each other, but how different manufacturers’ colors vary in temperament and compatibility with each other. Watercolors should not be overworked. It’s hard not to do. But Donna’s method defies convention. That her portraits’ flesh tones remain so vibrant and unfussed, and yet by her account add up to anywhere between 12 to and 24 extremely thin washes of paint, is a testament to her patience and unconventional skill.

Gretchen Hancock paints shimmering oil paintings of beaches, river valleys, Vashon Street scenes, ferries and still life arrangements. They often have a luscious translucence, reflections in water, or reflective metallic cups. Her work integrates both Apollonian and Dionysian persuasions. Gretchen carefully plans out her compositions from her own photographs: cropping, tinting, enhancing and sharpening her own photographic reference, anticipating what the paint will do later. She will delicately adjust the minutest details of her compositions. She carefully limits her subject matter and color schemes, revealing a mature artist who knows what to leave out and knows not to unbridle her painterly passions all at once. But once these Apollonian preparations are complete, her brush strokes are applied with fresh zest. The paintings are loosely painted without fuss. They are clear and clean and very satisfying to gaze upon. One of the results is that in print and online, her still lives and landscapes appear to be much larger and even more monumental than the 8” by 10” board on which they were painted. Gretchen achieves on a small scale what many artists need a much larger canvas to do. “A painting succeeds if it reads well across a room.” she said. These little gems accomplish that, and so much more.

We next report to you from Studio #8, 18528 Westside Highway, a fine example of our Holiday Tour’s abundant surprises and creative hatchings. Fiber artist Terri Fletcher’s beautiful home is the setting for Twigs, Tile and Fabric. In addition to Terri’s fiber works, also featured will be Elaine Summers’ mosaic creations, Karen Hust’s twig chairs, Vicki Browne’s hand-made brooms, and Ute Monjau-Portath’s original clothing and bags.

Terri Fletcher is fascinated with patterns in nature and textiles. With a light touch and a minimalist’s focus on variations within patterns, she creates exquisite works on paper and fabric, often employing the resist dying method of Japanese Shibori. She tells us “My background is in textiles and more specifically working with dyes to create resist marks on fabric and paper.  More recently, I have been working with Madrona twigs and magnets to create interactive works that invite touch and play between the art and the viewer.” She will have a variety of works from the twig pieces to indigo dyed hand towels, kerchiefs and silk scarves.  “In addition to my twig sculptures, I will have a few “Stick Critters” which are also made of Madrona twigs and magnets.”

Karen Hust and Terri, longtime friends, share a similar zeitgeist: finding beauty and sacred design in the branches of the forest. I stopped in to visit Karen Hust, and was welcomed to view a lineup of her small, rustic, yet elegant chairs, placed on a wooden window shelf and backlit by the sunny morning. I was immediately drawn to the simple quietness of their statement, the restraint expressed in their diminutive size, hand-woven seats and fluid, natural shapes of their spine, legs, and arms.  Karen says “I’ve always been interested in people’s relationship to Nature, and feel called to make things using our local native trees as a way to communicate something of the energy and lessons they offer us.  Every tree species is a different mood, texture, and color,” and each piece finds its own resolution in her work.  

The chairs are made of cherry, madrona, alder, maple, cedar,  driftwood, and use mortise and tenon joinery.  Often the branches chosen retain the original lichen, moss, barnacles, or beaver teeth marks as found.  Hust’s  studio/woodshop is an old seaplane hangar on her land, where she stores and dries the wood she collects on her ramblings around her Maury Island residence. “Earlier in my life I trained to be a college teacher of Nature Literature — to me, this direct work with the trees feels like a more effective way to teach, because I can get out of the way and let the wood communicate.” After she shapes and assembles the frame of the chair, the structure itself becomes the loom upon which seats are woven from wool yarns, deerskin, and other natural fibers. “I like the symbolism of chairs; they suggest the act of choosing a place and opening oneself to the influences of that place.”  Although the smaller-scaled chairs made for this Holiday Tour are not designed for adult seating, each chair offers a symbolic viewpoint, a perspective from which to celebrate an aspect of life.  I suggest bringing one of these small chairs home with you, and placing it in a special spot with the intent of contemplating nature’s wonders through their elemental, harmonious design and texture.

The authentic natural touch is also the mainstay of Vicki Browne’s hand-crafted brooms, their fanned ends made from Mexican-grown sorghum, selectively bred for broom-making.  An art and skill she’s mastered over years of practice, Vicki values the functionality of her creations. Beautiful as they are, her brooms are made to be used.  “I want the things we use in our lives to be beautiful and not all made of plastic,” she observes. Vicki also makes baskets and other woven articles, and mentioned she may do a show-and-tell of her process.  Vicki is a Vashon original; her pieces expand our concept of the purely functional.

The “Tile” in Twigs, Tile and Fabric is represented by Elaine Summers’ enchanting mosaics. Her pieces in this Tour are 3D objects, including mosaic vases, bowls, a rooster and chicken, guitar, pets, mailboxes, an elephant, and even slugs! Elaine has been making art for as long as she can remember, but started making mosaics in 1999, making fifty pieces her first year.  “I have experimented with many forms from garden bird baths to life-sized horses. I think the variety has kept the medium fresh” she says. Elaine’s design process is not calculated and exacting, rather for her “the idea comes from the form. I sit and look at it and think about the tile I have and then I begin. I don’t plan a lot out. It is a very organic process”.  This surprised me, given the permanence of her materials:  fiberglass, concrete, wood, or even glass; they are all malleable in Elaine’s hands, and they all add up wonderfully.   “I am happiest when creating”, the artist and musician muses.  You’ll see it: evidence of her happiness seeps through every crevice of her work.

Ute Monjau-Portath will also be exhibiting her unique clothing and one-of-a-kind bags. Ute is a designer by profession; we’re lucky to see her exquisite, capricious creations up close. It makes sense to invest in your favorite one, before your head turns to admire someone else wearing it around town.

In conclusion, the designer and teacher Milton Glaser used to talk about a good artist’s ability, no matter what the medium, to manipulate and elongate the viewer’s response as being the distance between the “Huh?” and the “Yeah!” The magic and appeal of a work of art lies between our initial confusion, (like figuring out exactly what it is Jan Wall is drawing!), and our eventual recognition. If it’s either too short or too long, the art is less successful. All artists’ works are demonstrations of this dynamic.  As you meander the open Studios across the island on the Holiday Tour, listen to your inner “Huh?” and “Yeah!” and find out what makes sense of this crazy world to you. Once again, the tour takes place this weekend and next, December 6th and 7th and 13th and 14th.